In the wake of what seems to be a growing movement of slime worshiping fanatics in the Underdark around Sshamath, the slime and other sinister forces seem to be building against The City of Dark Weavings.

Unlike the surface metaplot for 1352, there are powerful antagonists with specific goals at work in the Underdark this year, building upon the slime threat of 1351 that began encroaching upon Sshamath last year. Themes of the 1352 metaplot in the Underdark will be: General Intrigue and Politics and the Sinister Forces at Work - Slime and Otherwise - Against Sshamath from Within and Without. Players will have a chance to affect change through campaign DM's (explained below) via the player character membership in the Sshamath Bureaucracy.

Each Sshamath citizen player character faction in good favor with the Conclave will be offered a seat on the Bureaucracy to help the Conclave deal with the threats facing the city as the Conclave and Magistrature are preoccupied with other important magical, political, and policy matters. There may also be a certain number of seats for unaligned individuals in good favor with the Conclave. The Bureaucracy will help the Conclave to administrate the City Guard, the Charnag Maelthra intelligence organization, and the City Militia against threats to the Conclave and the city by the Bureaucracy providing policy recommendations to each of these organizations, but these recommendations could always be overruled by the Magistrature or the Conclave.

Below, will be the general Underdark metaplot themes for the 1st third (or Act) of the year and these could dynamically change with the development of RP in Sshamath and the Underdark.

Specific Themes:

Economics

Trade between Sshamath and other Underdark settlements
Trade between Sshamath and the surface
Difficulties put upon trade of Sshamath by the tunnels closed down by slime cultists
Economic competition within Sshamath internally
Trade between Sshamath and certain surface factions such as the Zhentarim

Politics

Relations between the different school and non-school factions of Sshamath
Relations between different faction members of the Bureaucracy
Relations between the Bureaucracy and the Conclave, the Magistrature, City Guard, the Charnag Maelthra intelligence organization, and the City Militia

Intrigue against the Conclave and Sshamath

Forces at work within and without Sshamath in the interest of slime
Forces at work within and without Sshamath with no particularly focused aim
A darker and more sinister force perhaps behind the above…
For the moment, interaction with the Underdark metaplot will occur mainly through three groups of DM's.

Campaign DMs

-We will have DMs assigned as campaign DMs to run Underdark event chains to stimulate the metaplot. These DMs will be using a new framework this year, focusing on small groups using event-chains.

-Underdark Event Chains - A series of events that consist of three events plus supplemental forum RP.

-We will test out this framework using the Sshamath Bureaucracy, running one Underdark event chain at a time with factions participating.

Player Request DMs

-We will also have player request DM's that will action metaplot specific requests that involve forum RP or single events (as well as non-metaplot related requests). Player requests will follow the normal guidelines linked to here (http://www.bgtscc.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=48188) and should be still submitted to the entire DM team for review, not just one DM.

Spontaneous DMing

-The DM team will create spontaneous one off events from time to time in game for unaffiliated non-guild characters and lower level characters and others in keeping with the themes of the year mentioned earlier.

Communicaton

-The DM team will be communicating publicly on 1352 metaplot information via the The Gloura's Wings forum, the new 1352 Metaplot forum (http://www.bgtscc.net/viewforum.php?f=399), the Dungeon Master forums, and the public General Discussion forums.

-Players wanting to communicate their RP to the DM team are recommended to do so via PMs to the entire DM team and in IC RP posts in the The Gloura's Wings forum as well as on private guild or player faction forums as applicable.